Market research

My magazine is aimed at working/middle class citizens between the ages of 15 and 30. It will be directed at either male or female audiences as it is mainly targetted for people who love the indie/rock music.

The sort of things I will be featuring in my magazine and what the readers will be expecting to see are:

• indie/rock artists - old, new, current, upcoming
• latest news about their albums, songs, tours/concerts,/gigs upcoming events etc
• gossip stories about what these artists have been up to, rumours
• how to win tickets
• "50 best ways to...." stories
• reviews and news
• interviews
• charts/lists of music - "top ten"
• posters
• competitions and offers

These ideas have arose from what I have asked people who would be interested in this magazine, these are people who already read magazines like NME.

Research: Magazine inspiration

For my magazine I have chosen to use indie/rock music, which will be current and modern yet have a classic and timeless essence.

Inspiration for my magazine would be NME magazine, which has been running since the 1980's (formerly a newspaper which started in the early 1950's). I like this magazine because it is well known and it is one of the biggest music magazines in the UK. It is iconic and readers respect their views. It follows older artists and what they're doing now and what they have done in the past, and it also keeps up to date with new artists and latest news about them.

Analysis 3: Front, contents & DPS

I chose to analyse MOJO magazine. These aren't part of the same issue as I couldn't find a whole magazine on the internet, but they are all MOJO. I chose this magazine because it follows the same sort of genre and culture (rock) as my magazine.

 

Type: The type of text is a magzine. The codes is uses are image, still graphic image and written language.

 

Audience: The target audience is men over the age of 25. It is aimed at people from a middle class background/with well paid jobs. It is designed for people who have a strong passion for music and often people who collect old types of music.

 

Purpose: It's purpose is to entertain. It can give a pleasure of escapism because it looks into people's interests and the lives of famous artists. It can also be informative as it will give updates on the latest music news. It could make the audience feel amused and even slightly envious, as they would like to be like the people they see in the magazine.

 

Effecctiveness: This is very effective because MOJO refer to themselves as 'the world's largest UK music magazine' and they have circulations in the high thousands every year.

 

 

 

The thing about this magazine that I will use in mine is the way they interview in their double page spread. I think this is really good idea because it lets the reader get to know the artists they may listen to every day. I also like the way their layout for the contents page as it looks neat yet intersting as it has photo's along with text. By doing this I learnt more about how magazines are constructed and what techniques they use to follow typical conventions.

Analysis 2: Front, contents & DPS

Q magazine is of a similar genre to my own magazine so I chose to do a TAPE analysis of it

 

Type:

 It's a magazine that uses still image, still graphic image and written language

 

Audience: Q is aimed at an older audience (over 25's) as it is aimed at people with full time jobs, this is because it is more expensive than other magazines.It also includes information on more classic artists and albums. It includes many music genre's so has a large fanbase and it aimed at males or females.

 

Purpose: it's purpose is to entertain mainly, but also to it's also to inform about upcoming events and albums from artists. It can express feelings and make the audience feel amused and even envious of the people they see inside.

 

Effectiveness: I think this works very well because it is an extremely popular magazine with thousands of buyers every year.

 



 



 

 

 

I couldn't find the exact contents page for the 'Florence and the Machine' issue so I just took another contents page from Q

 

 

 

I like the idea that this magazine has more than just one genre that it focuses on and this seems to be very successful, however with my own magazine I think having just one set genre would be better. By doing this research I learnt that a magazine doesn't just have to focus on one genre to be a good magazine. I also like that this magazine doesn't aim at one gender, so it is more widespread and doesn't have to be completely girly or completely macho, an even cross between the 2 to make it neutral is what I will do in my magazine. By doing this I learnt how magazine appeal to their audiences and make them as attractive to the audience as possible, this is a skill I will use in my magazine.

Analysis 1: Contents page

For this task I looked at the contents page of NME magazine. This was done to see how magazine's use certain features and for inspiration with my own contents page. I learnt how all of the listed features below are used and the reasons why.

Composition

• The page is very spread out with certain page numbers with their related story lines and images in seperate sections. The numbers are not in a chronological order which is because the editor wants the reader to be interested in the whole magazine before they even look at the first story. This is effective because there are images of celebrities which will catch the attention of the reader and draw them to certain pages.
• There are seperate sections of text columns the first showing 3 stories down the left hand side, then there is the main story in the centre which is in it's seperate box to show that it's the most important. There's a column down the right with 2 stories in and there is 1 story in the bottom section with the rest of the pages listed with the stories that are on the pages, and there is also an advert for subscribing to the magazine at the bottom right corner.
• The supporting images are contained within the text boxes and they are fairly big and clear to see.

Image

• There is a main image of Johnny Marr who is a popular music artist at the moment. It's a medium shot of him wearing every day clothes looking as though he's been photographed just on an average day, and this was chosen because the readers will feel involved in his own life. This will attract readers to the magazine more because a main story about a popular music artist will interest them.
• There are supporting images for each of the featured artices on the contents page. The articles are widespread some are interviews and some are just new information about the artists. Images were chosen for every article here because it is more interesting than seeing just words on the paper. It shows some of the artists in action on stage or performing which will help the reader to get even more involved.
• There isn't many effects on the images, the majority are in colour and there are 2 images which are black and white and I think this is just for variation. The images are mainly all coloured because it makes the photos seem like they were naturally taken and the readers can get a full idea of what their favourite artists look like.

Graphics

• There is little icons or logos apart from the advert in the bottom right corner. This is an illustration with small versions of the magazine printed into it.

Text

• There is a headline in bold black writing saying "Inside this week"
• The page is defined as the contents because of this headline saying what's going to be in the magazine. There are also bold red page numbers on each story which are bright and eyecatching meaning they will be seen first, this shows that it's a contents page.
• The same font is used throughout, however it is presented in about 4 different ways. They are shown in different sizes some large, small and medium. They are also presented in bold, italic and fine. Each section contains different types of text for example one has small, bold text and large, italic text. This stops the page from looking boring because it is a plain layout.

Theme

• The colours are red, black and white. It creates a house style by having the plain white background, black text and red feautured things such as the page number. This is carried on throughout the magazine.
• It relates to the front cover because the name of the magazine (NME) is in bold writing, and it continues to use the same type of font which is black. The two are recognisably part of the same magazine.

Analysis 1: Double page spread

Composition: there is only one image and it is on the left hand side of the spread and it takes up the whole page. There are 3 columns of text. It develops a house style because on each of the articles in the magazine. There are page numbers at the bottom of the page, there are some logos/graphics within the article and others placed around the page (top right and bottom left)

Text: There are 3 different fonts all used in the text, the title and the pull quotes within boxes, they all differ. There are 4 different colours which makes things stand out yet it still looks classy and simple. The positioning helps create a house style because on any other double page spread or simple article in this magazine the title is bold and in the same position and there are text boxes either 2 or 3 on these other pages, making it continuous and make it obvious it's  the same magazine.  

Images: The photography is simple and "stripped back" as such. It is black and white and this makes it seem authentic. The mise-en-scene is simple it's just a plain polo top and the background is plain, this relates to the genre because with indie/rock music it's all about having things simple without big exaggerated things which could be the case with pop music. This genre is about the artist and the music, nothing else. There is a small caption just saying about who's in the image.

Language: The language is informative because it is telling the readers about what the latest news is with this band. The tone is friendly, it's not just telling the reader in a formal manner, it's as if it's talking to the reader the way that they would speak themselves. There is colloquial language and some swearwords which shows it's for an older audience and that it isn't afraid to voice it's opinions, which is what the magazine genre is all about.

Analysis 1: front cover

From doing this TAPE analysis I learnt how magazines use text, colours, graphics and images to keep their readers interested. I found out what was effective and why it was and this will be helpful when creating my own magazine. The things I have noticed and will use for my own magazine will be the way this magazine keeps a certain house style throughout so that anyone can tell what pages belong eachother. I will also make sure my magazine applys to the audience it's aimed at.

Preliminary task: contents page

 

 

This is the contents page to go with my school magazine front cover. I used the fonts Myriad Wed and Gill Sans Ultra Bold. This was the same as my magazine cover as I wanted to keep the house style throughout. I used the same colours of red and yellow to show that these 2 pages are related and this should be clear to the reader. I split up the images and the text so there was something different compared to other magazines, as many would just have the text on one side and then the images on the other. I decided to do this because it is more interesting and seeing a smaller piece of text to read is more likely to attract someone to reading rather than lengthy pieces which would just turn someone away, especially a school student which is the target audience for this magzine.

 

Again, like I did with the front cover, I changed parts of the fonts to bold or italic to give some variation, it also showed the key words, such as the student that is featured name (Holly Newell) and what the page is about (ie 'food bank')

 

If I were to do this again I would have taken more images as there wasn't much of a selection I could choose from so I had to use every image I had. I would also maybe have a different background that just black becase it is the main thing that is seen and it can look plain and boring, so in future I might have a patterned background or many have one big image as it.

 

 

Preliminary task: front cover

 

 

This is my front cover for a school magazine. I used my medium close up shot as the main image as I thought it would be most effective, this is because the model is wearing school uniform and this shows that the magazine is definitely one for a school. I used images of students working through their everyday lives because it gives off a natural effect showing that it doesn't look staged and that this is what being at St Mark's is like.

 

The images I used are fairly dark so I decided to use bright colours to contrast with this. Red and yellow are extremely eyecatching and this is helpful when you are trying to get the audience of this magazine to look inside, so if the stories on the fornt are attractive then it will lead them to want to look into the magazine.

 

I used 2 different fonts, Myriad Web and Gill Sans Ultra Bold. I differed between 2 because I wanted to explore what sort of effect it would have on the reader. I also explored further with this by having different types of these fonts, I used bold and italic features to make certain words stand out, for example where I wanted page 8 to be noticed I changed 'page 8' to italic and left the rest of the sentance in normal font. I created a house style which was a black background with the colours and fonts staying the same. If I were to make this into a full magazine I would continue this throughout.

 

If I were to do this again I would have taken more photo's, as all of the ones that I took I had to use on the front cover and the contents, which means I didn't have many to choose from. I would take the pictures with better backgrounds as some of the ones that I used in this were not as clear and didn't show the full effect of what I wanted.

 

 





Preliminary Exercise Draft

This is my draft for the preliminary exercise. I will use a school pupil as the main image and to be my medium-close up shot. I will take several other photographs to have on this front cover. I opted to use little text because I wanted it to be simple and for the focus to be on the images and the front cover, this is because a school prospectus like this is aimed at teenagers who attend/are interested in this school and they would most likely prefer to look at photos rather than reading through text.

Preliminary images

I used all of the images I took for my preliminary task. This was because I didn't take enough to have a choice of what to use which I would have liked to. I liked the images I took as they were all related to the genre of the magazine and they all worked well. For my main task I will take far more images so that I can have a range to choose from.

AS Media Studies Foundation Production: Brief

Preliminary exercise: produce the front page of a new school/college magazine, featuring a photograph in a medium close-up plus some appropriately laid-out text and a masthead. Aditionally candidates must produce a mock-up of the layout of the contents page to demonstrate their grasp of the progam

Main task: produce the front page, contents and double page spread of a new music magazine.